Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)

Although our winter is far from over, we've experience a couple of those unseasonably warm days. Friday the temperature made it up to 70°F. I saw several honey bees, especially in our compost. I suppose the bees (like humans) are drawn out of their hive by this warm weather, and are searching for flowers which they will not find. I don't know if our compost contains sugars the bees can actually use, but the bees are especially attracted to the citrus peels it contains.

(Editors Note:  A reader explained these bees are out of their hive on a cleansing flight.   When the weather is cold, bees "huddle together around the queen (and the honey.)  They slowly rotate from the outside to the center so that no one gets too cold.  At the core of this cluster of bees, workers shiver their bodies and raise the temperature of the cluster as high as 95 Fahrenheit, but just outside the cluster, the unheated portion of the hive may drop below freezing."  When the weather warms the bees "make a cleansing flight to eliminate their body wastes. Honey bees never defecate inside their hive. This is one of their behavioral traits that serve to help prevent disease from spreading through the colony. "  Bees also perform a variety of routine maintenance and housekeeping tasks on the hive on warmer days.  Please check out the two sites I've linked above for more information.  Thanks for cluing me in about cleansing flights , Sue!)

The photo above shows three of the characteristics that help identify this insect as a female (worker) honey bee. One of these is a pollen basket.  Female bees (queens and workers) in family Apidae (honey bees, carpenter bees, bumblebees and several lesser known groups) have specialized structures called pollen baskets (corbicula) used for temporarily storing collected pollen so it can be transported back to the nest/colony. The pollen basket is a smooth, concave structure surrounded by long, stiff hairs located on the tibia of the bee's two rear legs. As the bee visits flowers, she accumulates pollen all over her body. She uses her legs to aggregate the pollen and transfer it to her pollen basket. It may look as if a bee simply has hairy legs, but some of those hairs (setae) are actually combs and brushes used for transferring pollen. The pollen is combed, pressed, compacted, and transferred to her pollen basket. Honey and/or nectar is used to moisten the dry pollen so it will stay in place.  In this photo, her pollen baskets are empty because there are no blooming flowers for her to visit.  A photo of a honey bee with a full pollen basket is here.

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Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)

Cuckoo Bee (Nomada sp.)

"B" is for Bee
(Please pardon my lack of originality)
 

In this case, a cuckoo bee in the genus Nomada.  The cuckoo bee was given its common name because it evolved the same kleptoparasitic practice as the European Cuckoo and North American Brown-headed Cow Bird.  A female cuckoo bee does not provide for her offspring.  Instead, she lays her eggs in another bee's nest.  Her eggs hatch early and the cuckoo's larvae eat the other bee's provisions.  Some cuckoo bees kill the other bee's eggs.  Others leave the eggs for her larvae to eat.  Cuckoo bee larvae often have large mandibles to facilitate eating other bee's eggs.


Cuckoo bees are not seen visiting flowers as often as other bees.  Since she does not need to gather provisions for her own offspring, the female cuckoo bee only nectars often enough to take care of her own energy needs.  She lacks a pollen basket, scopa or other pollen collecting body hair common to most bees.  For this reason, cuckoo bees are often mistaken as wasps.  Likewise, among bees, cuckoo's are poor pollinators.


Instead of nectaring, the female cuckoo spends much of her time flying low over the ground searching for nests of other bees.  Once she locates a nest, the cuckoo waits for the host species female bee to leave, then enters the nest and lays her own eggs.  Most cuckoo bees parasitize nests of just a few bee species (2-5), but some are very specific and only parasitize nests of just one other bee species.


(A preview of coming attractions:  "M" is for moth.  The small moth sharing the strawberry bloom with the cuckoo bee is a Sedge Moth in the family Glyphipterigidae.)

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Cuckoo Bee (Nomada sp.)

Pollen Baskets (Corbicula)

Common Eastern Bumble Bee - Bombus impatiens

(Photo:  Marvin Smith on 11/8/09)

Most everyone knows that bees visit flowers and collect nectar. Humans value the nectar product and call it honey. Bees also collect pollen. To the bee, pollen is as important as nectar. Pollen is the primary food for developing bee larvae.

Female bees (queens and workers) in family Apidae (honey bees, carpenter bees, bumblebees and several lesser known groups) have specialized structures called pollen baskets (corbicula) used for temporarily storing collected pollen so it can be transported back to the nest/colony. The pollen basket is a smooth, concave structure surrounded by long, stiff hairs located on the tibia of the bee's two rear legs. As the bee visits flowers, she accumulates pollen all over her body. She uses her legs to aggregate the pollen and transfer it to her pollen basket. It may look as if a bee simply has hairy legs, but some of those hairs (setae) are actually combs and brushes used for transferring pollen. The pollen is combed, pressed, compacted, and transferred to her pollen basket. Honey and/or nectar is used to moisten the dry pollen so it will stay in place.

Bumblebee with loaded pollen basket.

(Photo:  Beatriz Moisset via Wikimedia)

While most all bees collect pollen, not all bees have pollen baskets. Many have scopa, a general term referring to a number of different pollen-carrying modifications on the body of a bee. In most bees, the scopa is simply a particularly dense mass of elongated, often branched, hairs (or setae) on the hind leg.

Halictid bee, scopa loaded with pollen.

(Photo:  Beatriz Moisset via Wikimedia )

The bumblebee in the photo at the top of the page is a Common Eastern Bumble Bee (Bombus impatiens), probably the most often encountered bumble bee in eastern North America. It has an unusually long flight season and thrives across a wide range of habitats and climates ranging from the cold temperate zone (e.g., Minnesota) to the warm subtropics (south Florida). B. impatiens can be found in rural, suburban and urban environments. There are isolated pockets of Common Eastern Bumble Bees outside of it's normal range -- like California -- because it escapes from commercial greenhouses where it is used for pollination. The bee has no pollen because this photo was taken in early November when pollen sources were few and far between. She was lucky to find a few scraggly zinnias still blooming in our garden.

Sources and links:
Bombus impatiens on BugGuide
Pollen Basket on Wikipedia
Scopa on Wikipedia
Bumblebee legs on Bumblebee.org

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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Pollen Baskets (Corbicula)

Giant Resin Bee (Megachile sculpturalis)

The term GIANT resin bee is a little misleading. M. sculpturalis is a giant among resin bees which tend to be small. It is about the same size as a bumble been but more cylindrical and not as heavily built. The females tend to be larger than the males. The head and abdomen of the giant resin bee are black. Dense yellowish-brown hairs cover its thorax. Their wings are dark, but still transparent.

Giant resin bees are native to Asia. They were introduced into the United States in North Carolina in 1994. The exact means of introduction is not known, but via ship is suspected. They have since spread throughout the southern U. S. In the short run, there are no known harmful effects resulting from Asian Resin Bees, at least as far as humans are concerned. They are not aggressive and will seldom sting unless trapped. In the long run, it is not yet know what effects M. sculpturalis may have on native pollinators. Their size could give them a competitive advantage. On the down side, Giant Resin Bees are also known to be excellent pollinators of kudzu -- as if it needed any help in thriving.

According to North Carolina State University, Giant Resin Bees have large jaws, which the females use for carrying nest material. People usually encounter giant resin bees around buildings and wooden decks, because they commonly nest in vacant carpenter bee tunnels. These bees will also nest in small spaces between the boards of a building and in dry rotten logs with tunnels bored by other insects.

The female bee nests alone and begins by preparing a cell in an existing tube or narrow cavity, using resin and sap collected from trees. Other materials such as bits of rotten wood and mud are also used in nest construction. Next she collects pollen and carries it to the nest on the underside of her hairy abdomen.

After completing several pollen collecting trips, she lays an egg on the pollen ball in the cell. Then she seals it, and prepares another cell. Continuing in this fashion, one female can complete about 10 cells. If the entrance of the nesting tube is directly exposed to the outside, the tube may be noticeably sealed with a resin, wood and sometimes mud cap. After the eggs hatch, the larvae feed on the pollen and spend the winter within their cells. The larvae pupate in late spring and the adult bees emerge that summer.

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Giant Resin Bee (Megachile sculpturalis)

Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)

                                                                                                          (Photo taken 03/16/09)

Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) on Cutleaf Toothwort (Cardamine concatenata).  The toothwort is one of the earliest blooming wildflowers in our area.

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Honey Bee (Apis mellifera)

Sweat Bee

Sweet Bee (Halictidae) -- Tribe Augochlorini

Sitting on a Black-eyed Susan petal. There are many different species of the little, green, metallic bees which are divided into three tribes. Getting an ID to the proper tribe is often the best one can do from a photograph.

Sweat Bee

Digger Bee

Digger Bee - Svastra obliqua

The common name digger bee is based on the fact that most of the bees in this tribe dig holes in the ground for their nests. Other digger bees nest in wood and some are parasites of other bees. Parasitic digger bees do not construct nests.

Digger bees are also sometimes called longhorned bees due to the especially long antennae of the males. The bee in the photo above is a female.

The velvety fur of digger bees is one of the things that makes them excellent pollinators. All that hair collects a lot of pollen as they move from flower to flower. This particular bee is relatively free of pollen because she had just cleaned herself. When I first noticed her, she was hanging off the tip end of a flower petal by her mandibles and scraping the accumulated pollen off her legs.

Front view



Cleaning off pollen.

Digger Bee